


Do You Remember?

by Beautiful_Doom



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Angst, He Also Doesn't Remember Much, Nightmares, Sad Story, Timothy is Scared, identity crisis, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beautiful_Doom/pseuds/Beautiful_Doom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timothy has a nightmare one night and is confronted by who he was before the surgeries. His past self confronts him with the challenge of remembering his life before Hyperion. Timothy... can't remember much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Remember?

Timothy had fallen asleep on a bed with silk sheets and all the soft comfy pillows he desired.

He also fell asleep clutching a soft plush cat, but that was a well kept secret. Either way, he fell asleep after a long day of meetings, proposals, surprise department visits, and paperwork. This kind of day always tired him out, and his bed was his sanctuary from all the bull he had to deal with during the day. Though he himself was not much of a murderer, he often discovered why Jack wanted to airlock or shoot so many people. A lot of them were idiots. Even more of them were smug bastards. But Timothy prided himself on not killing people...as often as Jack did. 

But now he was asleep and dreaming. Most dreams were of him in expensive cars with groups of highly attractive women in the other seats or lying on the deck of a yacht while a supermodel fed him grapes or even of him relaxing in a hammock with a peaceful little house on one of the Edens (he was still trying to convince Jack to get a vacation home there). But this dream was different. For one thing, it was dark and quiet. He was standing there by himself until a light came on to reveal... himself? 

Granted, this version was his genuine self. Those bright brown eyes framed behind glasses that sat upon a freckled nose. That wild blonde hair that always gave him trouble no matter what he did. That skinny frame of his that had later bulked up under Jack's keen supervision. It was him before Hyperion, before the surgeries, before Handsome Goddamn Jack. His past self was busy sitting at a computer and chewing on a pencil as he all but glared at the screen. Timothy recognized that look; it was the look of writer's block. He'd always been a writer growing up, filling his computer with story after story, staying up late nights and chewing pencils to shreds as he tried to think of what to write next. 

"Do you remember?" 

Timothy was torn from his thoughts as he realized that the other had just spoken. He'd turned away from the computer screen and was regarding Timothy with an unreadable expression. Timothy blinked a few times, unused to hearing his higher, nasally voice. 

"Huh? Remember what? I don't understand..." He replied uneasily. He really didn't like the look the other was giving him. The other reached over into the darkness and seemed to slip a switch. Light illuminated the emptiness to reveal... Timothy's college dorm. The bed was unmade with bright green sheets, the walls were covered with assorted posters ranging from company advertisements to cats. The floor was pristine and the dresser and desk were cluttered with papers, books, and wadded tissues from the nights he had spent crying from stress and pressure. It all looked so familiar, and yet felt so alien to him. This had been his home for so long, and yet he felt like it was something he'd never seen before. 

"Do you remember this?" The other pushed the rolling chair back from the computer and gestured to the room. "College. This room. All those stories we wrote, all those books we poured over, all those nights we barely got any sleep from all the studying..." The other stood and approached Timothy. "You don't, do you? Not surprising. You don't remember much these days..." 

"What?" Timothy took a step back. "Of course I do! I remember. I remember lots!" But was he stating a fact or trying to convince himself? Even as he thought about it, the room faded away until it was just him and the other back in the void. The other pushed up his glasses and looked annoyed at Timothy. 

"That's baloney, and you know it. You're forgetting more and more about who you were before all this. Do you remember our home? Remember Mom? Captain Fluffball, our old cat? I bet you can't. You've been forgetting more and more and letting that jackass fill your head with his own thoughts and memories." He tilted his head, light glinting off his glasses, and Timothy could swear he saw a maggot wriggling in one of his brown eyes. He shook his head. 

"Look, you don't get it. This is my job now. I have to play a game of pretend to earn my paycheck, and I didn't have much choice to begin with. But I remember everything." Did he? Details were trickling away faster the more he tried to recall them. Did he remember his mother? She had blonde hair too, right? Or... maybe it was red. Black? She always wore a... a... something. Something around her neck. Always harping on about how sentimental it was. And she used to sing.... she sang... what was that lullaby? 

"See?" The other smirked. "You're forgetting. You're forgetting who you really are. You're turning into him." Timothy narrowed his eyes. It wasn't true at all! He knew who he was. He knew who he really was. Nothing Jack ever did could change that. It was just a little hard to remember since Timothy had literally nothing from his previous life. All photos, clothes, and trinkets had been destroyed and replaced by things that Jack owned. He could still remember seeing all the new fancy clothes for the first time as Jack taught him how to dress. Even all of his old stories and drafts had been done away with. Years of work gone in an instant. Timothy of course had tried to recreate them, but Jack had frowned upon it. _Unless you're writing about me and how great I am, I don't want you writing. You're me now. The only things I write are contracts and witty comments._

That had been the end of that. 

As the years went on, Timothy eventually found himself unable to write stories anymore. Any attempt always drew a blank. He could write out a beautifully worded contract, but a simple short story was impossible. Timothy realized that he had lost such a major part of himself, but never really noticed it. He'd just swept it off his shoulder like it was no big deal, too busy doing what Jack wanted him to do. 

How could he have just brushed that off? 

"Guess we really did die in whatever accident that asshole cooked up for us," The other chuckled. "Timothy Lawrence is no more. You let him die when you sold our soul to the devil himself. How could you? How could you kill us like that?" 

"I had no choice," Timothy snapped, getting more annoyed. "We were swimming in debt. It was either this or sell our organs on the black market. Even then we'd still be in a hole. Nothing I did helped or made it better. We were screwed in every way!" He had really become desperate before making that fateful decision. All the hiding, all the scrimping, all the angry messages about past due amounts. He'd been stuck living in some shithole apartment with no electricity and having to be mindful of how much water he used. He would shiver and sniffle on cold nights and nearly pass out from heat stroke on the hot ones. He would wear ragged clothes and eat little to nothing, sometimes desperate enough to eat from a dumpster. His apartment had been bare and infested with bugs that crawled over him while he tried to sleep on the lumpy mattress that sat on the floor. He'd hit rock bottom several times before he decided to sign his life away to Hyperion. 

"So you sold yourself. Body, mind, and soul. You sold it all away to the devil because he offered you... what? Something better? Your wildest dreams? What did he offer you that made it all worth it?" The other was sounding slightly amused from Timothy's defenses. 

"Anything would have been better," said Timothy. "There was nothing left for us. Nothing in the future for us. We may as well have been dead." 

"Better dead than wearing another's face," the other said. "Look at you. A murderer. A thief. A tyrant. A con artist. A liar. A coward." Timothy could really swear he saw something crawling in the other's eyes. "What's your name?" 

"Timothy Lawrence," he said. "And I'm leaving." 

The other began to laugh, but it wasn't Timothy's old laugh. This one was terrible and horrifying. As he laughed, maggots began to pour from his eyes, his glasses shattering on the floor. Timothy watched, horrified, as the other's eyes began to melt from his face and drip to the floor. His skin began to bubble and pop, dripping from the bone and splattering across the floor as well. Timothy finally managed to run away, but the laughter echoed all around him. It was a mocking laugh. Flashes of events and people appeared around Timothy, but he found himself unable to recall what or who they were. He couldn't remember his old home, his family, his friends, he could barely remember college, he could barely remember what his hobbies and likes had been. Jack had become the center of his world, slowly consuming him more and more with each passing year. Was this his fate? Was he doomed to forget everything? Was this how he would truly become Handsome Jack? Had this been Jack's plan all along? 

He stopped abruptly when the other appeared before, him body still bubbling and melting away, changing before his very eyes. When the melting finally ceased, Timothy found himself staring at himself as he looked now. The other smiled with sharp teeth and a demonic smile. 

"What's your name?" He asked. 

H-handsome Jack," Wait, that was wrong. He'd meant to say his real name. The other took a step forward, grin never wavering. 

" What's your name?" He repeated. 

"Handsome Jack..." 

"What's your name?" Another step. 

"Handsome Jack." Dear god, what was wrong with him? Why was he saying that? 

"What's your name?!" The other was standing right in front of him now, smile much to large for his face and teeth far too sharp to be human. 

"Handsome Jack!" He was crying now. Why was he saying that? Why couldn't he say his real name? He wasn't Handsome Jack. He was Timothy... he was Tim... he was.... he was... 

"Handsome Jack," he repeated. The other laughed again and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. 

"That's all you are now. Timothy Lawrence is dead. He never existed. He was never you. You were always...." 

"I was always Handsome Jack," Timothy repeated, feeling every bit of himself crumble away, replaced by the fire and power that was his boss. He blinked and the other's form shifted slightly. He blinked again, and saw that he was gazing into a mirror and it was himself that was wearing that demonic expression. 

"Handsome. Goddamn. Jack!" He laughed to the void. 

~O~ 

Timothy woke with a start, tangled in the silk sheets, and soaked with a cold sweat. He fumbled around in the dark before he was able to turn his lamp on. He covered his face while he tried to catch his breath, thoroughly terrified from the nightmare he'd had. Even as he tried to dismiss it, the words of the other rang in his head. Was it all true? Had he really forgotten so much? Was he letting Jack remake him inside as well as outside? He tried to remember anything from his past. Anything at all, but it was all dark. He could barely remember anything... 

Timothy jumped out of bed and rushed over to his laptop nearby. No, it wasn't true. He was Timothy Lawrence. He was a writer. He'd had a family. He'd had friends. He'd had a life before all this, and he was going to prove it! He was going to write a story and show everyone that he was still himself. He wasn't Handsome Jack, he was Timothy Lawrence! 

He opened a new word document and cracked his knuckles. Ok, time to do it. Time to prove it. Time to show everyone! His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unable to move any further. Timothy strove to come up with anything. Anything at all. But phantom words rang in his head. Only contracts. Only contracts. Only... contracts... 

Tears spilled over the keyboard as Timothy stayed in that position. He wished to anything he could to just write something. Anything. Anything would do, but even as he tried, he couldn't. He began to sob to himself as he realized the other had been right. He wasn't Timothy Lawrence. He never had been. All he was now was Handsome Jack.

**Author's Note:**

> *procrastinating on updating other stories* Sorry! It's a little hard to get the chapters how I want them, but I will try to get them up soon. In the meantime, have this to tide you over. Thank you all so much for your patience. Please comment and tell me what you think of this one, I haven't written much horror or angst before.


End file.
